Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Feminism: It's a tainted word

But personally I think that we pro-life women have to stop describing ourselves as “feminists” of any description. The word has too much negative baggage attached to it. Although its origins lie in France in the early 19th century (“feminisme”), its popular usage began in the 1960s when the phrase “women’s liberation” got a bad name – perhaps by being too closely associated by the batty element which publicly burnt bras? Now “feminism” has a bad name too. It is forever tainted by association with “reproductive rights” – a horrible euphemism for abortion. This was something that the original suffragettes would never have dreamed of campaigning for, as Fiorella observed in her talk.

If you want people to accept "pro-life feminism" maybe you have to stop calling it by its opposite. It confuses people.